I used VDubMod to edit out about half of a 1GB VOB file and saved the result as an AVI file. Two questions:
1. The resulting AVI file, which I thought would be less than half the size of the original VOB file, was 20GB! Apparently I did something wrong - what?
2. Is there a way to get the resulting 20GB file down to a size nearer to what I expected? The original VOB file has been deleted
Sounds like you didn't select any compression, so you would have gotten raw video. Problem is that it would have been raw RGB24 and the VOB was YV12. The reason why this is a problem is that you lose some quality in converting to RGB and back. But yes you can compress the RAW AVI to another format.
Okay, I just checked the Video | Compression dialog box and see that the default is Uncompressed RGB and that's clearly what it must have used. There are 23 compression options listed.
Because I have little experience doing this sort of thing, the Compression section of the Help file was of little use to me, ie, I didn't understand most of it. My intent is to edit multiple VOB and/or AVI files, save them as AVI files, and combine the saved files to burn to a DVD. Which compression option would you suggest? I'd like the file size and quality to be commensurate with the original or at least pretty close.
I've done some googling on the topic and see that XviDMPEG-4 is often mentioned, but not necessarily recommended. Seems like there are a *lot* of settings that must be considered in using this program.
XviD is more of a final destination or distribution format. It is lossy and since you are only then going to reconvert to MPEG-2 for DVD would cause an unnecessary quality hit.
You could compress your raw file with a lossless codec (these have very few settings). This would save 50% or more in space and preserve quality. You could also look at using AVISynth to edit or using an MPEG-2 editor.
